Surgical procedures are increasingly more complex and often require the surgeon to maintain over a relatively long period of time a fixed bodily posture relative the operative field thereby contributing to surgeon fatigue. This is further exacerbated when the surgeon performs a laparoscopic procedure which requires handling of instrumentation with both hands while maintaining visual control of a video display. Multiple published studies have shown that a surgeon's muscle fatigue increases during the performance of surgical operations. There are numerous published studies showing that ergonomic requirements of a surgeon are not met during the surgery by prior art systems. Notably, the height of the operating table relative to the surgeon may be too high or too low and may thus require the surgeon to assume a less than comfortable position throughout the procedure. While prior art surgical tables are equipped with controls for adjusting the height of the surgical table relative to the floor, the controls have a limited range and importantly are not designed for optimizing the position of the surgical table bed relative to the surgeon. In some situations, the limitations of the height of the operating table can cause the surgeon to operate from a less than optimal angle. Moreover, the position of the patient may make access to the operative field more difficult, and decrease operative field exposure, prolong the surgery time and may increase the chance of an operative complication.
Furthermore, prior art systems do not address the situation when two or more surgeons are required to perform a surgical operation, each needing the ability to independently optimize his/her position relative to the operative field. For example, the surgical table height may be proper for one surgeon but not for another.
Currently, operating rooms are typically supplied with simple surgical stands. A surgical stand is an iron stand of a fixed height for supporting a surgeon in a standing posture. The prior art surgical stand is not adjustable to accommodate the positioning needs of the surgeon or surgical team performing the surgery.
Surgeon chairs are known. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 5,490,716 to Naughton and U.S. Pat. No. 5,029,941 to Twisselmann. Additionally systems of body supports for a surgeon performing a surgical procedure are known. See for example U.S. Pat. No. 3,754,787 to Garber. See also U.S. Patent Application 2006/0207021 to Brunson et al. entitled “Multi-directional personnel lift.” However, the applicants are not aware of prior art systems directed at optimizing the ability of a surgical team to readily, precisely, and efficiently control the position of a surgeon(s) relative to a surgical table bed while affording the surgeon and surgical team a requisite freedom of movement that contributes to surgeon comfort.